Common Ground

Indigenous Resistance in the Black Hills

 

1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific

Nick Tilsen & Krystal Two Bulls in conversation with Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson on the Black Hills Land Back campaign. We’ll conclude with a performance/reading by Jordan Brien.

In this talk

Please join us for a conversation with the NDN Collective on the Land Back campaign to reclaim the Black Hills—the sacred Lakota lands on which Mount Rushmore is situated—and to return the land into the stewardship of the Indigenous nations who have historically called the Black Hills home.

Nick Tilsen

Nick Tilsen
President & CEO of NDN Collective, a national organization dedicated to building Indigenous power, Nick Tilsen is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. He has over 18 years of experience building place-based innovations that have the ability to inform systems change solutions around climate resiliency, sustainable housing, and equitable community development. He founded NDN Collective to scale these place-based solutions while building needed philanthropic, social impact investment, capacity and advocacy infrastructure geared towards building the collective power of Indigenous Peoples. Tilsen has received numerous fellowships and awards from Ashoka, Rockefeller Foundation, Bush Foundation and the Social Impact Award from Claremont-Lincoln University. He has an honorary doctorate degree from Sinte Gleska University.

Krystal Two Bulls

Krystal Two Bulls
Director of the NDN Collective’s LANDBACK Campaign, Krystal Two Bulls is Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne from Lame Deer, Montana. She has extensive experience as an organizer and on the frontlines with campaign development and management on local, national and transnational campaigns for social, racial and environmental justice. Krystal’s identity as a Native American veteran is central to her organizing and storytelling. At the heart of Krystal’s work are the connections between collective wellness, environmental justice, Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, and anti-militarism. In healing from her experience as a soldier, Krystal has dedicated herself to embodying what she views as the essential quality of a warrior: a commitment to the well-being of not only her People and their relationship to the land, but that of all Peoples.

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson
A 35 year old Affrilachian (Black Appalachian) woman from the working class, born and raised in Southeast Tennessee, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson is the first Black woman to serve as Co-Executive Director of the Highlander Research & Education Center in New Market, TN. As a member of multiple leadership teams in the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), Ash-Lee has thrown down on the Vision for Black Lives and the BREATHE Act. Ash-Lee has served on the governance council of the Southern Movement Assembly, the advisory committee of the National Bailout Collective, and is an active leader of The Frontline. She is a long-time activist who has done work in movements fighting for workers, for reproductive justice, for LGBTQUIA+ folks, for environmental justice, and more.

The Rail has a tradition of ending our conversations with a poetry reading, and we’re fortunate to have Jordan Brien reading.

Jordan Brien

Jordan Brien
Creative Designer of NDN Collective, and citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe Tribe in North Dakota. Jordan carries years of experience as a graphic design professional, having a wide range of expertise in creating visual communication for digital media marketing, including websites, online advertisements, social media campaigns, and brand identity. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Communication where he studied interactive multimedia. Jordan also spent years as a musician traveling Indian Country performing and speaking to Native youth. Jordan currently resides in Grand Forks, North Dakota with his wife and two girls.

❤️ 🌈 We'd like to thank the The Terra Foundation for American Art for making these daily conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive.